Haiko Wandhoff, Professor of Older German Literature at Humboldt University in Berlin, works as a freelance coach, consultant and trainer. In 2016, he published his 10 historical forays through the history of counselling under the title "What should I do?" - a comprehensive historical work on the history of counselling. 

PS: We apologise for the not intoxicating sound quality of this episode! It is evidence of a very hot summer day ;-)

Contents:

Information on the "History of Counselling" series

Contents:

• In Part 1 we fly over the Antiquity and the Middle Ages and learn various ideas for counselling.

• Part 2 leads into the Early modern times and modernityespecially in the era of the Clarificationwhich was also a turning point for the idea of counselling, the result of which was a deep Counselling scepticism brought with it. 

• Part 3 will once again be dealing with a fundamental change that is taking place in the Postmodernism and the concept of the Counselling without advice led.

Central idea

...of this series is to gain a deeper understanding of today's counselling phenomena:

• What happens to the people involved in a counselling process beforehand when one person wants advice and the other prepares to give it?
• What influence does the advice have on the cognitive self-counselling processes - and what is the basic function of the advice?
• How does counselling relate to other forms of influencing communication? Proselytising, teaching, mentoring and commanding and other forms of domination?
• Why does everything that is offered in terms of counselling seem to have to be systemic?
• What's with the suggestion that advice is also a slap in the face?
• Why is our company called a consulting company?
• And how is it that you can hardly do any job with any seriousness today without immediately being courted with a counselling offer?

Contents of part 2:

• Summary
• Mistresses as an advisory phenomenon at the princely court
• The New Era – The Great European Conversation (Roeck)
• Enlightenment and counselling scepticism (Montaigne and von Kleist)
  • Self-counselling imperative of modern times
  • Devaluation of external counselling (asking questions = inability to self-reflect?)
  • Devaluation of giving advice
  • Emphasis on self-counselling, self-talk (talking to yourself)
  • Modelling the inner voices

„He who seeks advice does not listen enough to himself – and he who gives advice is presumptuous “

• The silent guidebooks: the triumph of guidebook literature
• Rehabilitation of external counselling in the 20th century

Left:

• Website for the book (publisher's page): "What should I do?", Corlin-Verlag, 2016.